The Impact of the Anti-Poverty Relocation and Settlement Program on Farmers’ Livelihood: Perspective of Livelihood Space

Abstract

To better promote the new anti-poverty strategy and serve as a reference for poverty alleviation in other developing countries and regions, this paper discussed the impact of the anti-poverty relocation and settlement program (ARSP) on the livelihood of farmers from the perspective of livelihood space. Existing research focuses on quantitative research on the relationship between relocation and livelihood, but lacks a perspective that combines livelihood and space. In this study, Nanshan village was selected as the research area, using the semi-structured interview and the semi-participatory observation methods to obtain the original materials, and the snowball sampling method was used to determine the interviewees. This study found that the ARSP has a more significant effect on the expansion of production space of young people and farmers with high household savings; meanwhile, by changing the traditional folk house layout, the non-agricultural resettlement mode also forces farmers to adapt to urbanized living, which is a slow process. Affected by factors such as housing segregation and cultural elements, farmers’ social interactions show the characteristics of self-isolation in the short term. However, the evidence shows that this trend is declining; after the relocation, the village was incorporated into the community jurisdiction. Similar to urban–rural interfaces, with the transformation from rural to urban, it is difficult for the normalizing management mode and service supply capacity of communities to meet the growing demand for urbanized services of farmers. The clarification of the above impact provides a basis for future relocation community governance and policies.